


late in this last extinction

by kindclaws



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bellamy doesn't die he just has his memories erased, F/M, Gaslighting, a pride and prejudice amount of focus on hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:34:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27135986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindclaws/pseuds/kindclaws
Summary: "The Last War..." Bellamy begins hesitantly. "It was supposed to bring lasting peace, right?""It has," the Shepherd snaps, so sharply that Bellamy flinches at the sound of it. But by the time he looks up the Shepherd's face is as warm and impassive as ever. There is no trace of anger in the lines of his old, wise face, and Bellamy is struck dumb with doubt for a second. He swallows hard."There is nothing to worry about," the Shepherd says. "You did an excellent job.""But - " Bellamy says, faltering. "Your daughter stabbed you." He can’t get the grim satisfaction on her face out of his mind. The longer he thinks about it, the more calculated her violence seems. Nothing about it seems to fit the equation.The Shepherd's smile grows cold and strained at the edges, but he doesn't drop it, not even when he looks away and shakes his head slightly as though Bellamy is a foolish child. They drink the rest of their tea in silence, and Bellamy can't help but feel like he failed some kind of test.or - after the Last War, First Disciple Bellamy Blake wakes up on Bardo and struggles to piece his memories together.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 25
Kudos: 122





	late in this last extinction

**Author's Note:**

> **CONTENT WARNINGS:** Bellamy is NOT dead! But he is amnesiac and there's a bunch of gaslighting and unreality happening. Someone gets stabbed with a butter knife. Both Clarke and Bellamy survive the ending and have a slightly bittersweet but mostly happy ending? I think? There's also a mention of Lexa but like, unlike jroth I recognize she's firmly in the past and the reference actually fucking makes sense and it's SUPPOSED to be about Clarke learning to let go of her martyr-ing and let herself be happy for once, JROTH, you ASSHAT.
> 
> Title by Sam Sax, from [“Prayer for the Mutilated World”](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/147631/prayer-for-the-mutilated-world) in Poetry Magazine. I picked it before the finale aired and wow, that aged well.
> 
> Please forgive little worldbuilding inconsistencies with canon. idk what a bardo is and I don't care enough to actually watch season 7. I suffered enough via the gifsets. Thank you to everyone who patiently tried to explain the anomaly to me while I tore jroth's logic to shreds. You guys are so valid.

#

The technician behind the camera gives the stranger the ghost of a smile, encouraging without putting any real emotion into it, and gives him the nod to begin. 

His lips are strangely dry, but he has already finished the glass of water they brought him. It would be rude to ask for another so soon, wouldn't it? The stranger clears his throat and takes a deep breath. He almost expects his voice to come out hoarse but it's just low and gravely.

"My name is Bellamy Blake," he says, and he pauses to consider whether his voice is familiar to him, if this is how it usually sounds. He wasn't speaking much when he first woke up. He doesn't know how many days it took him to become conscious and stay conscious long enough to register anything else besides a blinding white, but it feels like a while. Maybe anything feels like a while when it's your only point of reference for the passage of time. 

"Go on," the technician says. He's pretty sure she told him her name. Something with an M. Or an N. He doesn't want to ask again and upset her, or worse, start another round of tests on his short term memory.

His lips are dry again. 

"What is there to say?" he asks in his half-strange voice. He raises his fingertips and absently touches his throat as she frowns.

"Anything that comes to mind. The memory of a sight, or a smell. If you like the taste of a certain food. Anything could be a trigger. Anything about you."

"My name is Bellamy Blake," the stranger recites again, feeling his vocal chords vibrating under his fingertips and finally convincing himself it is his voice. "I... I have dark, curly hair. I have freckles. My body seems strong, but these scars - "

"These are all visual facts," the technician interrupts, with a hint of frustration. "Tell me something about _you_ ," she says, and the stranger's first reaction is a kind of bewildered despair, followed by unexpected anger. His fists clench on the smooth white fabric spread over his thighs.

"No, no, I'm curious about that train of thought," another voice says mildly. The stranger glances over to the side and feels a rush of security settle over him, like a warm blanket. The Shepherd smiles at him over the rim of his teacup. If his Shepherd is smiling, he can't have fucked up too badly. "Go on, Bellamy," he urges gently. Everything he does is gentle. The stranger's fists slowly relax and let go of his robes. "Do you remember how you got any of your scars?"

He stares down at his splayed fingers. The most obvious scars are littered across his knuckles. There are freckles on the backs of his hands, but fewer here than the rest of the body he explored in the mirror. His skin is olive-coloured, and clean. The nails on each finger are trimmed in perfect crescents, marred only by an ugly bruise underneath one of them. The bruises on the rest of his body are already fading, leaving only faint nebulas of green and purple, but in the infirmary they told him the bloody fingernail would take a while to grow out. He is not sure he should say aloud that the bruises and the scars are the only thing that feels right, that he is a little perplexed every time he looks down and finds his hands completely free of blood and dirt. He shouldn't keep secrets from his Shepherd, but he doesn't want to worry him. 

Doesn't want to make him think the war broke him, after all.

"Bellamy?" the Shepherd prompts. 

"My name is Bellamy Blake," he replies automatically. It is the only thing he is sure of. 

"Yes, what else?" the technician behind the camera says impatiently. The back of his neck prickles against the tall collar of his robes. “Tell me something you know.”

The stranger looks up and finds the eye of the lens focusing and unfocusing, the folds of the shutter like the mechanical eyelid of some heartless, hungry creature staring him down. He can hear it whirring ever so slightly above the sound of his own breathing, just a beat above a comfortable resting tempo. His hands closed into fists again sometime in the last minute, without him noticing. He uncurls them deliberately and feels the rough fabric beneath his fingertips. 

He makes little effort to stop his frustration from creeping into his voice as he retorts: "My name is Bellamy Blake and I know this robe is _fucking_ itchy."

"That's enough," the Shepherd says suddenly. His voice is almost sharp for a second, but when the stranger glances over, the smile he sees is as fatherly and humoring as always. "You cannot be expected to reconstruct all your memories in one day. You have suffered great trauma, Bellamy. You must be patient with your healing. It is a miracle you are even alive, but then, not even the Last War could keep my First Disciple down, could it?"

The stranger lowers his gaze because it seems like the right thing to do. His cheeks are warm.

"Thank you, my Shepherd," he murmurs awkwardly.

"Take him back to his quarters," the Shepherd says suddenly, clapping his hands together once, twice, and the door immediately opens. As unsettling as it felt to be the subject of his keen and knowing gaze, it is worse to feel his attention move on so suddenly. The stranger stands up to greet the two disciples who move to his sides, off-kilter and feeling like he's lost something. He tells himself that the Shepherd is an incredibly important man with incredibly important duties as he follows his two silent escorts out of the room and down the hall. The Shepherd sweeps out behind them and strides in the opposite direction. He doesn't look back even once.

The stranger's quarters are Spartan - and as he thinks this, he stops in his tracks on the threshold. 

"Something wrong?" one of the other disciples asks, and his thought vanishes like a soap bubble popped. 

"No, everything's fine," he murmurs, and a handful of seconds later the door closes and locks behind him. He wastes little time in pulling the scratchy outer layer of his robe over his head and lying back on the bed in just the under tunic. 

"My name is Bellamy," he recites to the ceiling, because it seems to make everyone happy when he says it. The ceiling reminds as impassive as inanimate objects usually are. He mouths it over and over again until it starts to feel true.

On the sixth day - or perhaps the seventh, he’s not sure, his sleep cycles are still off-kilter - they move Bellamy to general residence. A man with wiry red hair leads Bellamy down the corridors with long strides and an animated commentary that slips in one ear and out the other. Bellamy tries to pay attention, he really does - every conversation feels like a new test, or maybe a chance to peek ahead at the answers? - but the man is throwing names around like they should mean something to Bellamy, and they _don’t_. 

Eventually they reach what the other man calls “home sweet home.” The room is larger than the last one Bellamy was kept in, to accommodate 4 bunks on either side of the bed, but no less spartan. There are the beds in stacks of 2, a small trunk at each end for their linens, and a folding screen in the corner to change behind. Most of the bunks are empty, the beds so perfectly made Bellamy almost wonders if no one ever sleeps in them, but there’s a woman lacing up her boots on one of them. 

“Bellamy,” she says as she stands. “Good to see you up and about again! Sorry I can’t stay and chat, I’ve got work.” She slaps him on the arm as she passes and is gone out the door without another backwards glance before Bellamy can say or ask anything. 

“Here you are,” the man says, coming to a stop by one of the bunks and fluffing up the pillow on the top cot. “I did laundry for you, so there are fresh changes in there, when you need. Put away your things and lets go grab dinner.”

“This is…” Bellamy trails off. _Utterly unfamiliar_. “Very nice of you.”

“Anything for my friend,” the man says with a smile that has a strange edge to it. 

“Are we friends?” Bellamy asks automatically. 

The man clicks his tongue, and the edge gets sharper. “I know they said the Last War erased some of your memories, but I’m hurt. I thought I’d left an impression.”

“I’m sorry,” Bellamy says, swallowing down the irritation that rises up in him. Why does everyone keep acting like he’s _chosen_ to forget, like he _likes_ being confused and ten steps behind in every conversation? “I don’t even know your name.”

“Doucette,” the man says. He raises an arm and claps Bellamy hard on the shoulder, steering him towards the door. “Don’t worry. You and I, we go way back. We’ll have our rapport back in no time.”

To Bellamy’s immense relief, Doucette makes more of an effort to point out the turns in the complex this time, though he still points down so many corridors that they begin to blur in Bellamy’s mind. They begin to get more crowded, the closer they get to the mess hall, and disciples pass by in groups of two or three, always serene, always pristine white, always nodding to Bellamy and saying hello. He tries to look at each face, urging each to spark some familiarity in him, but he’s left awkwardly nodding back to stranger after stranger. 

They turn the corner, and there is a second - just a second - before one of the doors at the end of the hall closes. There is a woman being dragged back into her room, her face bruised and bloody. If it weren’t enough of a shock seeing something bloody - something _dirty_ \- in the complex for the first time, there is something startlingly unnatural about her blood, like a frigid darkness underneath her pale skin, and if asked Bellamy will say that's why he stares at her. 

As though she's felt his eyes on her, her head jerks up, and their gazes meet. Her eyes widen, and her limp legs suddenly kick at the disciples holding her up. Her face melts from shock to violence like it's had a lot of practice doing that, and the naked fury of it makes Bellamy's hair stand on end. Doucette’s arm flies up to - what? Protect Bellamy? Block his passage forward?

It's just a second. The door closes on her with a smooth hiss, and any sound Bellamy thinks he might hear from behind it is surely just his imagination. The corridor without the woman is once again pristine and empty. It doesn’t seem right. There should be… there should be marks. Evidence. A trail of blood, if nothing else. Instead it’s like they erased her.

"Is something wrong?" Doucette asks, eyeing him. 

His breathing is coming very fast. Bellamy makes a conscious effort to slow it down even as he marvels at the rush of adrenaline through his veins, the tremble it leaves in his fingertips. He hides them in the folds of his robes, like the visceral reaction he had to that unknown woman is something to be protected from prying eyes. 

It's just...

He didn't know someone could look so _alive_. It's like everyone else he's seen since he woke up in the infirmary is dreaming, and she's a shock of colour and fury. And he knows, with a terrifying certainty, that he needs to see her again. That he could spend his entire life chasing the shiver in his veins when he saw her, and never feel satisfied. 

He molds his face into something halfway passive.

"Nothing," he says, only a little breathless. "It's just shocking to see someone..."

"Who doesn't believe, I know," Doucette finishes, placing his hand between Bellamy’s shoulderblades and guiding him away none-too-gently. Bellamy startles. _She doesn't believe?_

_You can do that?_

“What else do you remember?”

Bellamy stares at the veins in the back of his hands and thinks about how gray his skin looks under white light. He thinks the technician is getting frustrated with him again, and he doesn’t want to be a disappointment, but the harder he tries to concentrate, the more the faint impressions of his memories seem to slip away. They’ve been at this for at least an hour, and Bellamy’s mind keeps drifting to the sensation of the robes against his skin, the itch at the back of his neck. The present demands his attention. 

He licks his dry lips and reluctantly raises his gaze to the camera. 

“I remember… blood,” he says. 

“Louder, Bellamy, so the mic can pick you up,” the technician says. He falls silent, his hands fidgeting in the folds of his robes. Maybe this would be easier if they gave him something to do with his hands while he talks, like - 

A red ribbon. A child’s laugh. A needle dipping in and out of fabric - Oh. He thought he had something there. Nevermind. 

“Go on.”

Bellamy shudders. 

“I remember being afraid,” he says. “And cold, sometimes. And… a little boy with a blue backpack.”

“Who was this boy?” 

He can’t remember. There were brown eyes. Bellamy feels a wave of guilt and shame he cannot place, and his hands curl into tight fists full of fabric. Hands. Hands. He did something with his hands.

“Bellamy?”

He forces himself to breathe out and splays his hands flat in his lap. 

“I don’t know,” he says. “He must not have been very important.”

The technician sighs. “Fine,” she says, and the quiet click of the camera powering off is the best thing he’s heard all day. “We’ll continue tomorrow.”

After lights out he lies awake in his bunk and listens to the soft sounds of sleep from the others in his dormitory. This, at least, sounds comforting. What the mind doesn’t know, the body remembers; the safety of other lungs nearby in the darkness.

He doesn’t feel tired at all - when he realizes he’s dreaming, it’s with a shock nearly strong enough to wake him again, that he doesn’t know when he finally slipped into it. The forest gives it away - a spectrum more vivid than anything he’s seen on Bardo since he woke, yellows and greens so bright they take his breath away, brown soil so rich he can almost smell it; a dampness in his throat, the scent of dead and not-yet-dead things. He reaches out to try and touch a shaft of sunlight spearing in through the canopy, and his hand goes right through it. 

He’s not sure why he’s surprised. It’s just like trying to grab onto his memories.

Bellamy walks for a while in silence, and the further he walks the more the forest seems to fill in itself, like a drawing he’s adding detail to. After a moment, birdsong. After another, the sensation of a faint breeze on his cheeks. Undergrowth. A softness to the ground when he steps on it, like the soil making room for him.

When he finally hears the humming, it already feels inevitable. He changes his direction immediately, thoughtlessly, ducking under a low branch and nearly jogging along the edge of a pine-lined ravine towards it. He realizes halfway that at some point in the dream, he lost the everpresent white robes, that he’s wearing worn denim and blue instead, that there’s a handgun in his waistband. He stops in his tracks and slips it out. 

It fits perfectly in his palm. He doesn’t understand. There is something nearby, a memory on the tip of his tongue, a ghost he doesn’t want to turn around to see. His name is Bellamy Blake and he knows he’s held this gun before. 

Again, humming, louder than before, loud enough to drown out the roaring in his ears. He blinks away the fear and forgets it immediately. When he starts walking again, there’s no gun, not in his hand, not in his waistband, not left behind on the forest floor behind him. His feet crunch on dried pine needles, one after another, and then he reaches the height of the rise and he’s looking down on the river, and there’s someone already there waist-deep in the swell, a pale bare back dappled with sunlight. 

Bellamy’s knees give out, but he makes no sound when he hits the ground. There is no break in her humming, just a rising and falling in the melody as she wrings water out from long, blonde hair. Bellamy’s hands are suddenly slick. He looks down and finds them covered with blood - 

He jerks awake in his bunk, gasping for air, trying to wipe his hands off on the sheets. It takes him a moment to realize there’s nothing there to clean, no sticky warm blood. He’s fine. He’s safe. Everything’s fine. He’s back in his bunk, in his unfamiliar home, surrounded by the quiet breathing of friends he doesn’t remember meeting. The laughter of children rings hollowly in his ears.

Everything’s fine.

In the morning, Doucette plants himself in Bellamy’s way again, and tells him the Shepherd is expecting him for breakfast. 

“It’s a great honour,” Doucette continues, dusting non-existent lint from Bellamy’s shoulders and straightening the stiff collar of his robes. “But of course - you _are_ First Disciple.”

Something about the way he says it makes Bellamy frown. “How long have I been First Disciple?” he asks. 

Doucette shrugs with one shoulder and turns to lead the way, apparently already done with conversation. “Oh, a while,” he says dismissively. He changes the subject to his day’s plans as they walk down the winding halls, and Bellamy lets it drop, only half-listening, his mind lingering on the forest in his dreams, the pale figure in the river.

The door to the Shepherd’s chambers opens. There is an unexpected blonde head sitting next to the Shepherd, and it takes Bellamy only a few seconds to realize it's the woman he saw down the hall a few days ago. He recognizes her immediately even clean and dressed in white, with only faint black scabs at her temples to hint at the blood he saw running down her face before. His heart skips a beat.

"So glad you could join us for breakfast," the Shepherd says, and the woman's head snaps up. Bellamy freezes in place under the weight of her stare. The Shepherd is the only other person who makes him feel like they're looking right through him, but that's not a good comparison. The similarity ends there. The woman's eyes are blazing, a startling shade of blue, and he feels flayed by her gaze. "Bellamy, this is my daughter, Calliope. Calliope, this is Bellamy." 

Calliope's jaw sets like she's gritting her teeth, and she deigns to look away from Bellamy long enough to give the Shepherd a look of pure hatred. The Shepherd looks entirely unperturbed by it, though he can't possibly miss it. It's so sharp it makes Bellamy take a step back. Doucette places a hand between his shoulderblades and pushes him forward through the doorway, gentle but firm. They slide shut behind him, and Bellamy is left alone with the Shepherd, his daughter, and two faceless guards standing so still by the wall they could be statues.

60 seconds into breakfast, and he already feels wildly out of depth. 

"Are you sure I'm... wanted here?" Bellamy struggles to say. "I don't want to interrupt."

"Please sit," Calliope says suddenly. She closed her eyes and takes a deep, shuddering breath. When she opens them again, there's only a trace of that awful anger in her eyes. She looks up at Bellamy again, and her face is pleading. Yearning, almost. It makes him want to take another step back, but when the Shepherd gives the affirmative, he forces himself to walk forward, until he's standing by the third chair and there's no where else to go. 

He sits, and Calliope lets out a breath that does very little to make her look like she's relaxed. This might be a very awkward breakfast. 

"Hello," he says awkwardly. 

She looks like she might cry now. None of the other disciples have such a dizzying range of facial expressions, and it's a little overwhelming.

Bellamy distracts himself with a scan of the spread before them. It looks... luxurious. There is a plate of assorted cheeses and cold cuts, another piled high with berries and sliced cantaloupe, tiny dishes with jams, and a covered basket with the most delicious smell of warm bread wafting from it... It may not be enough to impress the Shepherd's daughter, but Bellamy's a little swayed. He helps himself to a little bit of everything, thinking if there's anything he really likes or really hates at least he'll have something to report to the technician.

Calliope watches him take his first few bites, saying nothing, eating nothing. Her hands methodically shred a piece of bread into tiny, tiny pieces, and the pile that ends up on her plate seems like a waste. 

"So, uh," Bellamy begins, just as she blurts out: "Are they treating you well?"

He blinks.

"Yes?" he says, his voice lilting up at the end by itself, making it sound like more of a question than he intended.

"You have no faith in me," the Shepherd chides her gently, and Bellamy is reminded abruptly of the technician's words. _Someone who doesn't believe._

"I'd rather hear it from him," Calliope says coldly. She jerks her chin up at him defiantly, and - 

Something flashes in his mind. A memory? Her face, rounder, pink scabs on her cheeks, her hair longer and looser. The same proud angle of her jaw, daring him to meet her halfway. Bellamy jolts in his seat, and wonders if this is what they meant, when they said anything could trigger his memory.

"Do I know you?" he asks helplessly, and Calliope's face crumbles. 

He watches the line of her throat as she swallows hard.

"Sometimes I think we didn't know each other well at all," she says, her voice wavering. And then, without any other warning, she lunges forward and grabs the jam knife next to Bellamy's plate. 

It's buried in the Shepherd's shoulder before Bellamy can stand, and at the first drop of red on those stark white robes Bellamy's first coherent thought is that you have to be really, _really_ committed to draw blood with a knife that blunt. Holy fuck, it's buried like two inches deep. 

Blood pounds in Bellamy's ears as the disciples that were guarding the doors rush forward. There is a lot of yelling; mostly Calliope, but there are many people yelling at the Shepherd not to remove it. His hand hovers over the hilt of the jam knife. There is an expression of extremely mild concern on his face as Calliope is dragged backwards, her kicking feet knocking her chair over and dragging the tablecloth down a few inches. 

Bellamy is torn between attending to his Shepherd and the urge to fight the guards subduing Calliope. The command not to hurt her lodges in his throat and leaves him mute and reeling as they pin her to the ground. Underneath a nose that is now freely bleeding black, she is grinning like a woman with nothing left to lose. 

"Please," Bellamy whispers, unheard over the commotion. They drag her away, and he tastes iron in his mouth. 

"I'm fine, I'm fine," the Shepherd says, waving off a flurry of doctors. The bloodstain underneath his collarbone is now the size of a handprint. "She hit a rib, it didn’t go very deep."

“I won’t miss next time,” Calliope snarls from the doorway, the last thing Bellamy hears from her before the doors slide shut on her again.

Bellamy has learned two new, unexpected things about himself. One, he knows the taste of blood in his mouth, better than any food on the Shepherd's table. Two, he did something to hurt Calliope. Something _terrible_. It was subtle, but she was shaking the entire time she looked at him.

The Shepherd is at his memory session that afternoon, as though nothing has happened. He’s absent more often than he’s not, but his presence today is especially surprising. Bellamy’s gaze drops immediately to his collarbone, but the Shepherd has changed into new, pristine robes with not a stitch missing where Calliope’s knife was buried. Presumably there are bandages beneath those robes, but if Bellamy hadn’t been there this morning, he wouldn’t know anything was amiss. 

“I hope I am not distracting,” the Shepherd says to them, smiling faintly. He gestures behind him, and two disciples carry in a small white table and a tray piled high with teacups and pastries. 

“Of course not, it’s an honour,” the technican answers for them both, her face flushed and pleased. 

“I thought we would do something a little different today,” the Shepherd says, as the two disciples set down the table and bow their heads before leaving. He places two delicate teacups on plates and fills them from a kettle with unhurried care. “Sugar, Bellamy?”

“I - I don’t know,” he admits. 

“Sugar,” the Shepherd says to himself, adding a small spoonful to both cups. “A rare luxury. I thought today I would try to provide a more relaxing atmosphere, to make you feel more comfortable reaching for your memories. There is, of course, no hurry. M-Cap is always an option, but we’ll worry about that later, shall we?”

The Shepherd passes him one of the cups and settles in next to the technician, who, if she’s upset that she doesn’t get any tea, doesn’t show it.

“You may begin,” the Shepherd murmurs to her. 

The camera whirs to life, and the now familiar lens zooms in on Bellamy’s face. He still doesn’t like the way it feels, like the eye of some predator watching for a moment to pounce, but he’s learned to ignore it, to look at the technician’s face instead. 

She walks him through the usual memory exercises, simple tasks like listing words and harder ones like playing as far into a game of chess as he can before he can’t remember where the pieces are anymore. The Shepherd is silent through it all, sipping placidly at his tea, until the technician finishes with the warm up exercises and asks Bellamy if he’s remembered anything new. 

He thinks immediately of the dream in the forest, too vivid to be only his imagination - and how would he know the smell of soil and the sensation of wind from within these white walls?

“Bellamy?” the technican asks, tilting her head with interest. There’s something a little cold, a little hungry on her face now. His eyes flicker to the side, and he sees that the Shepherd is holding the handle of his teacup so tightly his knuckles are going white. Something on Bellamy’s face must have given him away, and the thought makes him panic suddenly. He remembers suddenly the girl in the river, the way she was turning so he’d see her face - 

And he needs to protect her.

"Tell me what's on your mind," the Shepherd ask, the pleasantness in his voice at odds with the tension in his hand.

_Lie_ , Bellamy screams in the safety of his own head. He casts about for a possible topic, something upsetting enough that they won’t dig deeper, won’t suspect - 

Ah. Calliope.

"The Last War..." Bellamy begins hesitantly. "It was supposed to bring lasting peace, right?"

"It has," the Shepherd snaps, so sharply that Bellamy flinches at the sound of it. But by the time he looks up the Shepherd's face is as warm and impassive as ever. There is no trace of anger in the lines of his old, wise face, and Bellamy is struck dumb with doubt for a second, wondering where he misunderstood. For a second, there was a wavering memory superimposed on reality. Another old man in another perfect white room, and a soft hand ready to kill.

He swallows hard. 

"There is nothing to worry about," the Shepherd says, lowering his teacup. "You did an excellent job."

"But - " Bellamy begins. "Your daughter stabbed you." He can’t get the grim satisfaction on her face out of his mind. The longer he thinks about it, the more calculated her violence seems. Nothing about it seems to fit the equation. 

The Shepherd's smile grows cold and strained at the edges, but he doesn't drop it, not even when he looks away and shakes his head slightly as though Bellamy is a child who has just said something so foolish it isn't worth responding to. He gestures to the technician, and she turns the camera off.

They drink the rest of their tea in silence, and Bellamy can't help but feel like he failed some kind of test.

But to his shock, he is invited to breakfast again, and Calliope is still there. 

There are no utensils on the table, after, nothing sharp. The plates are wooden, nothing that can be shattered. Calliope’s ankle is chained to her chair leg the moment she’s marched in by her guards, and she’s marched out as soon as they’re done eating. 

They don’t speak much. Calliope asks Bellamy once or twice how his day was, if he’s sleeping well, if he’s okay. But she never looks happy to hear it when he says that everything is fine, just nods with her lips pressed into a thin, angry line. It makes Bellamy wonder what would make her smile, makes him wish he had more to share than days that blend into one another and little tasks around the compound. 

The Shepherd fills most of the silence. Sometimes he tells stories that border on sermons, and Bellamy listens to the promises of peace and redemption and wonders why his chest feels so tight, while Calliope glowers down at the table and chews like she’s wishing it was the Shepherd’s bones. She scoffs once or twice, and Bellamy wishes they could talk without the Shepherd, that he could ask why she doesn’t believe.

Why she doesn’t even _want_ to believe. 

Because Bellamy’s memories aren’t coming back, but he’s seen his body while he’s showering, and what’s written on his skin scares him. His shins are covered in nicks and long scrapes, his knuckles criss-crossed with scar tissue, his thigh and his neck and goddamn near every body part carrying some foreboding remnant of violence. The worst is on his chest, just above his heart: a pucker of still-pink scar tissue that still hurts when he presses his thumb into it. The first time he noticed it, he ended up on his knees in the shower, gasping for breath, wondering why there were tears streaming down his face. 

He’s not sure he wants to remember how he got those scars, and he definitely doesn’t want any part of a life that promises more. The Shepherd says there’s another way, now that they’ve won the last war. A transcendence. A blissful end to the pain. 

How can his own daughter not want that? 

Bellamy wonders, sometimes, if he’s still being tested. If the Shepherd calls him to breakfast day after day to help convince Calliope to believe. He’s not stupid, though. He knows a lost cause when he sees one.

There are other days, though, that don’t feel like sermons. Days where Bellamy may as well not be sitting at the breakfast table with them. Where the Shepherd ignores him completely in favour of reminiscing about seemingly random anecdotes from a lifetime ago. _Do you remember the day at the beach, Calliope? Do you remember how you cried when the seagull stole your ice cream cone? And Reese tried to chase after it, oh, but do you remember how you used to tie his shoes for him when he broke his arm? Do you remember? Do you remember, Calliope?_

The first time the Shepherd calls her Calliope, she leaps out of her chair and flips a plate of fruit at his face. _That’s not our name!_ she screams, as the Shepherd calmly raises his hand and gestures for her to be taken away. 

Bellamy doesn’t see her for a few days. When he’s invited to breakfast again, the Shepherd begins his reminiscing again, picking up as though there was no interruption. 

He calls her Calliope again, and she sits very still, like a prey animal that thinks it’s heard one twig snap and is already anticipating the blow, and she doesn’t look at Bellamy, not even once, and sometimes - and this is the worst part - sometimes she looks confused. It’s not an expression Bellamy’s used to seeing on her face. 

(He’s not supposed to be used to her face.)

Bellamy asks Doucette and the others, once, what exactly the point of a First Disciple is. The others seem to have jobs, whether that’s manning the M-Cap sessions or tending to the oxygen lab or studying the Shepherd’s teachings or cooking, but they’re vague on what Bellamy is supposed to do. 

“I dunno,” Doucette says, shrugging one shoulder. “Anders practically ran the place while the Shepherd was asleep, but - “ he breaks off as their roommate elbows him in the ribcage. The others all fall silent. A significant glance passes between them, and goes unexplained. Bellamy studies one face after another, but his companions wear perfect masks of calm. 

“Who was Anders?” he asks in what he hopes is a light, casual tone. 

“The First Disciple before you, but he wasn’t really important,” one of the other disciples says casually, waving his hand as if he isn’t directly contradicting what Doucette said seconds ago. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Of course,” Bellamy says, and he smiles. 

He finds he’s rather good at faking his smiles, and this worries him. 

There are records of Anders, but the ones Bellamy can look into without raising any eyebrows from his watchful disciples are undescriptive and limited to the beginning and the end of his life: the serial number of the incubation chamber his embryo was gestated in, and the date he died. Which was, when compared to the current one, not very long ago. Bellamy has to wonder if being First Disciple is a life-long position. 

He goes looking for the embryos both out of frustration and morbid curiosity. The room is perfectly silent when he enters, and the sight of rows upon rows of tiny curled fetuses bobbing gently in their fluid-filled vats, tiny hands forming fists and stretching out to touch whatever it is they dream of in their false wombs. 

And looking at them - Bellamy has a memory. His empty hands close on thin air, but he can remember a weight. The warmth of a little mouth on the tip of his finger. The heady scent of blood. And two pale eyes, blinking up at him for the first time. His chest is tight with grief as he reaches out to the nearest vat, trying to remember - 

“There you are!” 

Bellamy jumps a foot in the air at Doucette’s loud greeting. His footsteps down the aisle are loud and confident, such a far cry from the way Bellamy came in like he was entering a place of worship, and he has to wonder how he didn’t hear his approach. 

“I was just - “ Bellamy says lamely, gesturing vaguely as his mind spins for an explanation. He’s the fucking First Disciple. Why is he slinking around his own compound like he’s a criminal here?

Doucette claps a heavy hand on his shoulder and begins to steer him away from the embryos. 

“I know, I know,” he says, “But listen, there’s going to be a sermon, and you should be up there at the front with everyone - “

They turn the corner, and there’s another figure there, a man in white mopping up the floor at a melancholic pace, his head bowed. Doucette stops talking and his mouth turns down into a sneer before the figure has even raised his head to look at them. 

“Bellamy?” the man says, his eyes widening. 

“That’s not how to talk to your First Disciple, janitor,” Doucette says. The man with the mop schools his face into something hard and calm as he tears his gaze away from Bellamy and on to Doucette.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a janitor, Doucette,” he says, in a voice that is quiet but sure. His next words are even quieter. “Bellamy would know.”

“There is when it’s a punishment, Levitt,” Doucette says. He spits upon the ground between them, and the man flinches ever so slightly. “Something for you to clean up, _traitor_.” His hand tightens on Bellamy’s shoulder and he all but steers them past the caretaker. 

Bellamy turns to stare over his shoulder, his mouth opening silently with questions still half-formed. Levitt watches him walk away with a dark, even gaze and raises a hand to wave. 

He doesn’t manage to shake off his confusion until two corridors later. 

“Hey, Doucette,” Bellamy begins carefully. “Did I ever - did I ever work in the embryo rooms?”

Doucette snorts. “No.” He provides no further information. 

And Bellamy thinks this might be a lie, because he knows he’s held a baby before. He _knows_ it was real, more real than anything else he feels.

Calliope has never been an enthusiastic participant in breakfast, even as the Shepherd gently admonishes her that breakfast is the most important meal, but even Bellamy notices the day she’s marched into her seat on the other side of the table and her hands remain limp and still in her lap the entire meal. 

The Shepherd keeps talking, unflappable, as Bellamy glances awkwardly between them and nudges platters closer to Calliope. She ignores all of his subtle hints to take something. 

Finally, the Shepherd pauses to take a long sip of his tea. The clink as he sets his cup back down on its saucer rings through the uncomfortable silence of the room. 

“Why aren’t you eating, Calliope?” he asks. There is a hint of steel anger underneath a careful veneer of fatherly concern. Bellamy is starting to get better at reading the Shepherd, and sometimes when he gets on this it makes all the hair on his arms stand on end. He tries to hide his shiver and shifts in his chair. 

Calliope’s voice is hoarse when she finally opens her mouth. 

“I miss my daughter,” she says, staring at her empty, pristine plate. Bellamy’s jaw drops. A daughter? She’s old enough to have a daughter? But she continues before he can wrap his mind around the concept, before he can worry that any child of hers would be too young to be left alone already. “I miss my people… my _friends_ …” She raises her head and looks directly at Bellamy for the first time in many days, and his whole body tenses under that bright blue gaze. Her mouth quirks on one side. “ _Bellamy’s sister_ ,” she adds, in a light, casual voice.

She never sees the blow coming - she’s still staring at Bellamy’s face when Bill’s palm connects with her cheek with a sharp _crack_. 

Bellamy is on his feet, the chair knocked down behind him before he knows it. He swallows down the wave of cold nausea beginning low in his Bellamy and holds onto the edge of the table so he doesn’t collapse on shaking knees. He’s not sure what to address first - the way Calliope is hunched over in pain, holding her face, or the Shepherd’s uncharacteristic violence and the cold anger still written on his face as he looks between her and Bellamy, or the words echoing on repeat in his mind. _Bellamy’s sister._

_Sister._

“But we don’t have sisters,” he says helplessly. He’s seen the embryos. The sterility of the serial numbers, the ancestry records encrypted and then deliberately destroyed.

“We don’t,” the Shepherd says. “Such selfish familial love would only interfere with our ability to treat everyone equally.”

“But - “ Bellamy says. _You have a daughter. Calliope has a daughter._ Again he thinks of the weight of a baby in his hands. Calliope slowly raises her head, and what he can see of her face underneath the hand she has pressed to her injured cheek is flushed skin, and a smile. She’s smiling at him. Bellamy’s head spins. It’s not a kind smile. It’s the smile of someone who has lost a battle to win a war.

_I had a sister._

“Enough!” the Shepherd says. “Bellamy, get out.”

“Where is she?” Bellamy asks, standing his ground at the table. “If I had a sister, where is she now?” Has he walked right past her in Bardo’s hallways without recognizing her? Is he breaking her heart every time he does, or does she not know him either? 

“Calliope is lying to tempt you away from the path of transcendence,” the Shepherd snaps. “Do not lose sight of our goal here, Bellamy. _Now get out._ ” He raises his hand, and the guards waiting stiffly by the wall march forward to haul Calliope to her feet and unlock the chain binding her ankle to her chair, just as another pair of hands grips Bellamy’s shoulder purposefully and pulls him towards the door. He lets himself be taken away only because he realizes he’ll get no answers from the Shepherd. 

He looks back over his shoulder at the door, and the Shepherd has already turned his attention away, his back to them. His voice shakes as he addresses Calliope. “This is _not_ what we agreed on. You promised not to interfere. There will be no more little breakfasts. You will go directly to M-Cap from your cell and back again without seeing anyone else, and you will do so as many times as it takes for you to remember.”

“It won’t make Calliope love you,” she says hoarsely.

The door closes.

Bellamy is left on the other side, his ears ringing, breathing as heavily as if he’s just run a marathon. The guard that pulled him out tries to nudge him down the hall, and Bellamy throws their grip off his shoulder with a disarming swing of his arm that comes naturally to him. There’s no room in his mind for him to marvel at it, at the ease with which his body is prepared to fight, not with every other competing thought. 

“Don’t touch me,” he snarls at them. If they’re angry or afraid or insulted, he sees none of it through their geometric mask. “Am I your First Disciple, or am I your prisoner?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer before striding off, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. 

The truth is that Bellamy doesn’t trust Calliope, either. He doesn’t understand the rules of the strange game she’s playing with the Shepherd and why he’s a pawn in it, and he doesn’t know her motives for telling him he has a sister, a sister she knows enough to miss. It could be another lie. Another test of his loyalty to the Shepherd. 

He’s not interested in waiting around for any more cryptic conversation to agonize over in his bunk when he should be sleeping. 

People lie, but their memories don’t. 

The first challenge is stealing a uniform. He follows a pair of guards who have just finished their shift and watches them check in to the armoury and walk out to spend their off hours in the white robes everyone else wears. He needs a keycard. For some mysterious reason, the Shepherd, or Doucette, or whoever is in charge of these things, has failed to provide their First Disciple with one. There’s a risk that only some keycards will unlock the armoury, but he’ll deal with that if it becomes a problem. 

Bellamy checks his dorm, first, but one of his napping roommates stirs awake as he comes in, so he quickly apologizes for interrupting their sleep and ducks out before they can question him. He thinks of the infirmary, next, and is very pleased with the idea as he greets the triage nurse and convinces him that no, he’s not injured, he’s not feeling unwell, he just wants to check on his fellow disciples - all it takes is one moment the nurse is distracted and Bellamy slips his hand into a sleeping patient’s pockets. 

He finds a keycard in the second pocket he checks and it’s torture making a round of the rest of the infirmary with it burning a hole in his pocket, smiling to the patients that are awake and nodding along as the nurse assures him everyone is being taken care of. 

The smile slips off his face the second he’s out in the hallway, and then he’s retracing his steps to the armoury. He has to do two laps around the block until the coast is clear and there’s no one walking by to see him try the keycard on the lock. He lets out a breath of relief as the door clicks and opens. Inside there are racks upon racks of hanging uniforms in every size. Bellamy darts to the back of the room, finds the first that looks like it might fit him, and strips. The armoured plates fit like a second skin, so much natural to him than soft white. He hesitates only a second before putting on the helmet - he doesn’t understand how anyone can see through those orange triangles - but once it’s on his head a HUD flickers to life before his eyes.

He expects someone to recognize him as an imposter the second he walks out, but no one he passes in the halls gives him a second look. Some of them nod, and he nods back, never pausing in his movement. It’s been weeks since he saw Calliope for the first time, but he finds the door they dragged her into on his first try, and there’s someone already there, about to unlock her door. 

“What are you doing here?” the other guard asks, tilting his head. 

“Shepherd’s orders,” Bellamy says gruffly, hoping he won’t be questioned further. “He wants us to double her guard.”

The other guard grunts. “I don’t mind a little extra help, frankly,” he says as he moves to unlock her door again. Bellamy eyes the other guard’s keycard and wonders if he’s skilled enough to switch theirs, or if the one he stole will work on Calliope’s door too. “I wish I was allowed to give her a fraction of the kicks she’s given me.” 

He makes a quiet, vaguely agreeable sound in the back of his throat as the door opens, and inside there is a blur of movement as Calliope leaps to her feet and drags her bedroll away from the door. She stands in the middle of the otherwise empty room with her feet planted wide, her chin raised defiantly. Bellamy feels a strange flicker of pride in her stance that slips out of his reach the second he notices it, and shakes his head to clear his mind. 

“Let’s go,” the guard says, and she makes no move to come closer. Bellamy follows the other guard’s lead, stepping inside to grab each of her arms, and can’t help but be distracted by drawings underneath his feet. He doesn’t get enough time to register any details before Calliope wrenches her arm out of his grip and swings a wicked punch at the other guard’s throat, but he sees trees, eyes, hands. Pieces of memories layering into each other in one surreal collage. 

He wants to understand. He _needs_ to understand.

Calliope fights them the whole way to M-Cap, but thankfully that’s only a few doors down. They strap her into the seat as a technician in white makes preparations, and Bellamy’s hands freeze on the cuffs holding her wrist down when he notices a tear rolling down her cheek as she struggles in place, staring up at the ceiling with an expression of raw panic so unlike the defiance she wore in front of the Shepherd. 

_I’m sorry_ , Bellamy wants to say, forcing his hands to finish locking her in before he gives himself away. The other guard finishes his side of the chair and turns around to walk to the wall. The technician isn’t looking. Bellamy quickly raises his hand and strokes her hair with a dark, gloved hand. It doesn’t give her even a fraction of the comfort he intended - she flinches away from his hand with a look of wild incomprehension, and Bellamy backs away, biting down more apologies. He presses his back to the wall of the room and clasps his hands in front of him, trying to affect the posture of a bored but dutiful guard. His heartbeat roars in his ears. 

The technician finally turns and approaches Calliope, and Bellamy sees the way her chest rises and falls faster as she draw in short, sharp gasps of air. She’s not fighting the straps holding her down anymore. She’s fighting to keep herself still, to keep the fear from being visible. 

She’s losing. 

“You’re in an endless desert,” the technician says in the same soft and gentle voice the Shepherd uses with Bellamy. Calliope stiffens in her seat, and a hazy image of a wasteland flickers on the M-Cap screen. “A hand reaches out for your own.”

“No,” Calliope says hoarsely. 

“Whose is it?” the technician continues, as though he hadn’t been interrupted. And then _Bellamy_ is on the screen, a bright blue sky behind his head, his eyes dark and determined as he looks down on his and Calliope’s joined hands. There’s a strange metal cuff on her pale wrist, and in the memory her gaze flickers between his face and the cuff as he makes no move to pull her up, and then - he’s hauling her up, and there are more hands reaching for her, faces he doesn’t recognize, terribly young faces surrounding them. 

Bellamy has never been more glad for the helmet that obscures his face from the others in the room, because he’s not sure he could school his face into a neutral expression right now. He asked Calliope, the first time they spoke if they knew each other, before his memories vanished. He knew it, somewhere, a feeling in his gut or the flicker in her eyes or in a missed heartbeat. 

“ _No_ ,” Calliope says, louder. 

“Erase that,” the technician comments softly. 

“No, you can’t have that!” she cries out, and then the memory is smoke on the screen, and Calliope’s crying is now audible. Bellamy nearly starts forward in alarm. _You will go directly to M-Cap_ , the Shepherd’s voice says in his memory. _You will do so as many times as it takes for you to remember._

This is the opposite of remembering.

“Next,” the technician says, and Calliope is back in the wasteland, surrounded by metal wreckage.

“In case this is the last time I get to do this,” the Calliope in the memory says, her voice hoarse, “I just want to say… Please don’t feel bad about leaving me here.”

“Fuck you,” the Calliope in the chair growls. The technician fast forwards. 

“Bellamy, if you can hear me - “ the memory says. His hands are shaking. Calliope makes a sound like a wounded howl as the technician skims mercilessly through her mind, and Bellamy wants to close his eyes, but no, he can’t, he came here to understand and he’s only more confused by what he sees, and he feels he _owes_ her this, he owes it to her to witness everything the technician is taking away. 

There are other memories, blurrier, ones that don’t fit. There are… _cities_. A swarm of people dressed in dark colours, their faces covered with scarves and kerchiefs, raising painted signs and hands and torn flags. Two small, pudgy hands poking at a scrape on a knee that is much browner than her pale skin. The Shepherd, absent the white robes and the white room and the white hair.

“Good,” the technician says approvingly as he skims through the not-memories. “The treatment is holding.”

And then there Bellamy is on the M-Cap screen again, pinned on his back in gray rags, a dagger at his throat, Calliope’s attention fixed upon the sly face crouched above his defenseless body. 

“ _Please_ ,” he hears her say. “I'll do anything. I'll stop fighting. Just please don't kill him - “ 

He makes quiet, choked sound in the back of his throat, and no one in the room even looks at him. This is all normal to them, their worlds aren’t being turned upside down, their memories not being ripped apart - 

Another flash, and Bellamy is older now, standing in front of Calliope in familiar white robes, and he is _begging_ her, and she raises a gun, and Bellamy falls with a burst of red across his chest, and if he thought he was breathless before it is nothing compared to how he feels now. _Oh_ , he thinks desperately. _Oh_. The scar on his chest, still tender and healing, suddenly makes sense, and makes even less sense at the same time. Calliope is sobbing openly in her restraints and Bellamy wishes he could too, but he forces himself to keep standing still, his gasps muffled by his helmet. 

He needs to know if he can trust her. 

The technician watches Bellamy fall limp over and over, his face thoughtful. 

“I think we’ll leave that one for now,” he says to the room. “Can’t have you feeling too comfortable.”

The screen brightens, and the memory is of a dusty sky behind a pane of glass and a brown hand pressed against a window, watching the whirlwinds kick up another swirl of lifeless dirt. 

“Come away from the window, Callie, it’s almost time for dinner,” a faceless voice calls.

Another flash, and they are young again, Bellamy’s bare face covered in blood and dirt, his eyes distant and haunted as he stares ahead into darkness. 

“You want forgiveness? Fine,” Calliope says, desperate and insistent. “I’ll give it to you. You’re forgiven.”

Bellamy turns his head slowly in the memory, disbelieving, until he’s staring at Calliope with guarded hope in his eyes and she hasn’t taken it back yet. The memory flashes ahead before they can see his reply, but Bellamy thinks he is beginning to understand. Sunlight, now, and they are standing in swaying grass.

“If you need forgiveness, I’ll give that to you,” he says, his face soft, the grief held at bay. “You’re forgiven.”

Could he do that again? Could he forgive a woman he barely remembers for trying to kill him?

The M-Cap technician makes a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. “Why does this one keep coming up? I’ve erased it twice.”

“Fuck you, you can’t have it,” Calliope grits out, her forehead creased in concentration. The scabs at her temples have opened up again and black blood is streaming freely down her cheeks and neck. 

Another flash, and this memory is blurred through tears - a list of names in careful ink, almost unreadable, and an empty spot at the very end. Bellamy watches his younger self approach Calliope slowly, as if afraid to spook her.

“If I’m on that list, you’re on that list,” he says, and the memory streams ahead in urgent bursts as he takes the pen from her and writes another name just underneath his. It’s not Calliope. 

“Clarke,” Bellamy whispers to himself, his eyes widening. It’s barely louder than a breath, and she couldn’t have possibly heard it, but she draws in a sharp breath and suddenly her eyes are straining as far to the side as they’ll go, trying to look at him in the corner of her vision. His gaze flies to the technician, and then the other guard, and before he can stop himself his mind is measuring the number of steps it would take to cross the room and take out the other guard, the fastest way to incapacitate the technician before he could call for more help. But the M-Cap chair - he doesn’t know how to get her out of it, and he doesn’t know what they would do after she was free, where to run. 

Fuck, he doesn’t even understand how they got here, how they’re saving each other in every memory until suddenly they’re not. The M-Cap screen flashes, and they’re in a bright blue room, and his face is so soft as he looks at Calliope - _Clarke_. 

“You inspire them because of this,” she says as she taps his heart, right where the scar is. “But the only way for you to survive is if you use this,” she continues, and reaches up to touch his temple. Bellamy forces himself to take a deep breath. Okay. Okay, she’s telling him they need a plan. 

But she’s at the mercy of the M-Cap, for now. The technician skims through only a few more memories, his work half-hearted, before throwing his hands up in the air.

“I am _sick_ of seeing Bellamy Blake’s face every day,” he tells Clarke. “You need to let go, Calliope. He doesn’t even remember you.”

He doesn’t, not really, but he’s seen enough. 

“Calliope says to tell you that she doesn’t want to come back and your haircut is boring,” Clarke says with a gasp. The technician gestures for Bellamy and the other guard to deal with Clarke before turning away, running a hand through his hair anxiously. 

Clarke is limp and exhausted as they undo her restraints and haul her up out of the M-Cap chair. She makes low, quiet whimpers as they drag her back down the hall, and Bellamy has to clench his teeth inside his helmet not to say anything. 

He waits until they’re back in her cell and the other guard has let go of her before slamming his shoulder into his chest and knocking him into the opposite wall. The other guard yells in shock and fear, but the door is shut, and Bellamy knows no one in the corridor can hear. He grabs the other guard’s visor and slams his head back into wall behind him, over and over, until something in the helmet _cracks_ and the guard goes limp underneath him. 

When he turns around, breathing hard, Clarke has scrambled to the other side of her cell and is watching him with fierce, suspicious eyes. Bellamy ignores her for a moment, looking down at the floor, at her drawings. He sees a two-faced deer split in half by glistening scar tissue, a little girl knee deep in the curve of a river with a spear raised above the surface of the water, a woman with a butterfly in one hand and a sword in the other, and over and over, his own face. 

“What do you want?” Clarke asks hoarsely, her jaw set defiantly. Bellamy slowly raises his gaze to her and seeing the guarded expression on her face, belatedly remembers he’s still wearing a Bardoan helmet. Her eyes never leave his hands as he reaches up and carefully lifts it off, shaking out his hair. 

She makes a choked sound when she realizes it’s him and struggles to stand. 

“Careful,” Bellamy says, automatically reaching forward to steady her. She throws herself past his outstretched hands and into his chest, her arm winding around the back of his neck as she cranes her neck up and kisses him with a wild gasp. Bellamy tightens his hold on her out of instinct and kisses her back, a little cautious, a little confused. All the tension melts out of her body as he holds her and he can’t help but wonder if the memory he saw where she shot him was a fake - but no, he has the scar…?

But she’s so eager against him, so warm and so clearly relieved he’s here that it takes all his willpower to pull away. 

“You remembered,” Clarke says, her tired face split in half by a smile brighter than the endless white walls. “I knew - “

“No,” Bellamy says. “Not exactly.”

The boundless joy on her face flickers and fades. She lets go of him and steps back, wrapping her arms around herself tightly, and Bellamy’s body feels cold where she was just pressed up against him.

“You said I had a sister,” Bellamy insists, pushing down a wave of inexplicable guilt. “Was she younger - “

Clarke wordlessly points to another corner of the floor and Bellamy follows helplessly to another drawing of the woman with the butterfly and the sword. She’s happier here, no warpaint, her mouth wide open in a laugh forever frozen to time. 

“Octavia,” Clarke whispers, and something in Bellamy’s mind slots into place. He remembers the soft weight of the baby in his palms and lets out a relieved, shaky breath. 

“Is she alive?” he asks, dreading the answer. 

“I think so,” Clarke says. “I - we made a deal. Cadogan would leave the rest of our people alone, let them take the Anomaly back home to Earth safely as long as we gave ourselves up. The last time I saw her, she walked through with them. She was okay. Angry, but okay.”

Bellamy feels himself sway on the spot and Clarke grips his arm tightly. An ironic reversal, considering she’s the one who was just strapped into M-Cap for a grueling memory session. 

“What does he want with us?”

“He wants me because I still have some of his daughter’s memories, from the time I held the Flame,” Clarke explains, and at his puzzled expression, she says: “You know? The Flame? The AI? Nevermind. He thought he could reconstruct her and erase me. Make sure she ‘transcends’ with the rest of you,” she says, putting bitter quotation marks in the air. “And you, I don’t know. Maybe he only wanted you to control me, though he wouldn’t need to make you First Disciple for that. Maybe he just really liked you.”

“I don’t like him back,” Bellamy mutters, and Clarke smiles weakly at that. 

He still doesn’t really know what’s going on, but he likes that smile on her. 

“So who’s in there?” he asks, pointing at her head. Clarke’s smile goes strained. 

“A little bit of Calliope, a little bit of Josephine. Mostly me. It gets busy,” she says. She jerks her chin towards him. “Who’s in your head?”

“Me,” Bellamy replies immediately. 

“And who’s that?” she asks, her eyes guarded. Bellamy looks away.

“Still working on it. Are you good enough to walk?”

“I… yes,” she stammers. “Are we running?”

“You said our people took an Anomaly back to Earth?” he says. “Can we follow?”

“I don’t know the code, but…” Clarke says, squaring her shoulders in determination. “Yes, we’ll figure it out. We just have to make sure we destroy the stone on the other side so Cadogan can’t follow. I don’t care what he does here with his stupid cult, but I’m not letting him have our people.” Her gaze strays to his weapon belt. “Can I have that handgun?”

Bellamy hesitates by the door, resting his palm over the holster. 

“You shot me,” he says quietly, and Clarke’s eyes flicker with pain. “That wasn’t a fake memory, was it?”

“No,” she whispers. “Bellamy, I’m so - “

“It’s not a good time,” he interrupts gruffly. He has so many questions he doesn’t know where to start, and it feels so strangely raw for a wound he doesn’t actually remember getting. He’s not ready to poke at it now. In her memories, she forgave him and he forgave her. Perhaps they can start with that. 

She comes to stand with him by the door and doesn’t ask for a weapon again. Bellamy waits until she meets his gaze again, reluctant as it is, and nods. She nods back, and he uses his keycard to unlock the door. There’s no one outside in the corridor - their first bit of good luck.

“This way,” Clarke says, immediately picking a direction and marching. Bellamy runs to keep up and grabs a hold of elbow. 

“Hold on,” he hisses to her out the side of his mouth. “At least make the tiniest amount of effort to pretend you’re a prisoner.”

“Then you should have picked up your helmet,” she says, and they both look back down the hall towards her cell, but then they hear voices from that direction and wordlessly agree to leave it behind and run. 

It’s impossible for Bellamy to forget that Clarke was being tortured in M-Cap just minutes ago, not when the blood on the side of her face is still wet and shiny and she’s out of breath so quickly, but he wraps an arm around her ribcage and hauls her up when she stumbles, lets her lean some of her weight against him whenever they stop for her to get her bearings and decide which way to go. 

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Bellamy asks her as they skid around the corner, and whatever answer she might have been about to give dies in her throat as they run straight into someone mopping the floors.

Bellamy blinks in shock as he recognizes the janitor from the embryo labs. What was his name - Levitt?

Levitt recovers from his shock first, looking between the two of them. 

“You’re escaping?” he asks, straightening his shoulders. He’s much taller than Bellamy remembers him being. The difference when he’s standing up straight and not trying to hide in plain sight is striking. 

“No,” Clarke says unconvincingly, given that she’s not supposed to be this far from her cell.

Bellamy remembers the way Doucette had spit at him, the way Levitt had looked at him like he knew more than he was letting on, and makes a split-second decision. 

“Yes,” he says. “You’re - you’re not happy here. Come with us.” 

“I’ve been waiting for you to figure it out for _ages_ ,” Levitt says all in a rush. “They wouldn’t let me anywhere near you - “

“Which way to the anomaly?” Clarke interrupts, apparently accepting that he’s an ally and not interested in hearing the details. 

“Here,” Levitt says, dropping his mop and marching down the corridor. Bellamy exchanges a glance with Clarke and they both dart after him. 

“Do I know you?” Bellamy asks as he catches up to Levitt. He’s starting to wonder how many forgotten friends he has in this goddamn compound.

“Oh, no,” Levitt says, his voice sounding distracted as he puts out an arm to stop them from running forward as he peeks around a corner. “But I know all about _you_ , I was your sister’s M-Cap technician. She loves you, you know? I know it hasn’t always been easy, but she loves you. She thinks the world of you.”

Bellamy’s breath hitches. 

“That’s true,” Clarke confirms quietly.

“Almost there,” Levitt says, and Bellamy begins to think they will make it - and then they hear shouts and pounding footsteps echoing down the hall. “Run!” Levitt calls, and Bellamy grasps blindly for Clarke’s hand and finds her already halfway, reaching out for him too. 

He can hear her panting a step behind him, already exhausted, and makes up his mind to carry her if he has to. He looks back, about to grab her and pick her up, and sees a wall of guards advancing on their tail, their faceless geometric masks indifferent to their pain. A staccato of gunfire rings out, and Bellamy flinches, waiting for the pain. Instead, Clarke gasps, her eyes going wide as she falls into him.

“Clarke?” Bellamy demands, hauling her up by the back of her jacket and gathering her into his arms. 

“You have to run,” she says, her voice thin and breathless. 

_Not without you_ , Bellamy thinks, but he saves his breath and follows Levitt around the corner. 

“In here,” Levitt says by an open door, and his eyebrows furrow when he sees Clarke curled in his arms. “Was she hit?” Levitt bars the way, his arms open to take Clarke’s body, and Bellamy doesn’t want to let go, doesn’t want to be separated, but he doesn’t know what to do and Levitt seems so sure - “Bar the door,” he tells Bellamy, and he finally lets him take Clarke and turns his attention back to the door. He puts his baton through the handle, though he knows it’ll only buy them seconds, and hurries to where Levitt is laying Clarke down underneath a strange, floating stone inscribed with dizzying symbols. 

“Hold on,” Bellamy says, kneeling and grabbing Clarke’s hand. Her head falls to the side, glassy eyes straining to focus on him, and Bellamy squeezes his fingers, trying to urge her with his eyes, and lets out a breath of relief when she squeezes back. The sounds of an army battering down the door fade away. There’s just Clarke, and _fuck_ , she can’t die before he’s forgiven her, she _can’t_ , that’s not acceptable - 

“I’m going to open the bridge,” Levitt says, hurrying to the controls, and he’s punching a code in when the door crumples. 

“Levitt!” Bellamy screams. 

The guards raise their weapons. A blinding green glow blooms from the stone above them. The world slips. 

In the next moment, water streams into Bellamy’s open mouth. He chokes on it, thrashing, and finds himself completely submerged. Some animal instinct tells him to swim for the light, so he kicks and kicks until he breaks the surface of the water and air scrapes down his throat in between wet coughs. He doesn’t remember letting go of Clarke, but she’s not here.

“Clarke!” he screams hoarsely as he treads water. “Levitt?” 

There’s no answer from either of them, no sign of movement at the edges of the lake he’s in. He dives back underneath the surface, forcing his eyes open against the water, and a stream of bubbles slips past his lips as he exhales, letting himself sink. Clarke’s blonde head appears green under the water but it’s still the brightest thing in the lake.

She’s not moving. 

Bellamy swims to her desperately, disturbing gently bobbing jellyfish with his passing and feeling the sharp sting of their tendrils against the backs of his hands as he pushes them out of the way. He ignores the pain in favour of grabbing a fistful of Clarke’s shirt and dragging her up towards the light, praying he’s strong enough to save them both. She doesn’t react when they break the surface of the water. Doesn’t react at all as he awkwardly maneuvers them towards the shore, pleading for her to wake up the whole while. 

He lays her on the wet clay on her stomach and presses down heavily between her shoulderblades, willing her to breathe. The lake washed away some of the blood but it begins to bloom again on her lower back, dark and inky. 

“Clarke,” Bellamy begs. “Clarke, _please_ ,” and finally she coughs up water, her fingers clawing weakly at the dirt and clay. 

“Bellamy?” she mumbles. 

“I’m here,” he says hoarsely, rubbing her shoulders comfortingly, even as he looks away from her and scans the lake for any sign of Levitt. Clarke makes a weak, pleased hum, and lays still, apparently still too exhausted to move. Bellamy glances between her and the still surface of the water, but if he’s really honest with himself, he doesn’t think Levitt could have made it. He was too far from the anomaly, and there were so many guns aimed at him, and Clarke is _here_ and she needs him and he can save her. He can’t save Levitt but he can save her.

“Okay,” he says, forcing his mind clear of the guilt and the grief. “Okay, bleeding is bad.” He starts stripping off his armour and presses his undershirt to her wound in a clump. “Clarke,” he begs. “Clarke, stay awake. How do I do this?”

“You did so good,” she rasps, her eyes shut and fluttering weakly, her cheek still pressed to the ground. “S’okay, Bellamy. You did good here.”

“I’m not done,” he grits his teeth and keeps looking around. The lake seemed pretty clean to him, the water clear and blue, but he should still try to disinfect the wound somehow, shouldn’t he? There’s a wooden cabin further up the shore, rickety and warped by age, but undeniably man-made. “Hold on, Clarke.”

He stumbles to his feet and runs to the cabin. 

“Hello?” he yells out. “Can anyone help? …Octavia? Anyone? Please!” 

There’s no response, no sign of life among the overgrown garden. The door swings open under the lightest touch, and the air inside the cabin is so stale it scrapes down Bellamy’s raw throat and makes him start coughing again. There’s a layer of dust thicker than his finger on everything inside the cabin. There’s no help to be found here. 

He runs back to Clarke, his heart hammering in his chest as she fails to stir as he approaches, but he manages to yell her back into consciousness. 

“You’ve saved me so many times,” she slurs weakly. “It’s okay. We can rest now.”

“You don’t get to die,” he says fiercely as he gathers her back into her arms and carries her away from the water. “I haven’t forgiven you yet, Clarke. You have to live so I can forgive you.”

Clarke’s eyes flicker open. She exhales. 

“Okay,” she says weakly, and leans her face into his chest. Then, softer: “Okay.”

Clarke lives, somehow. There’s a few times where he doesn’t think she’s gonna make it, and he thinks the miracle of her survival has more to do with her stubbornness than his pathetic attempts at medical care, but she lives, and that means they have to figure out what to do, after. 

He sleeps fitfully at her side while she recovers, and the dreams return in full force, like a dam in his mind has been broken seeing glimpses of Clarke’s memories. He’s not sure how everything fits together yet, still doesn’t know what things happened when and how, but he remembers enough to know what he’s missing. 

He grieves again for the little girl he raised, for his mother, for eighteen dead, for Jasper, for Monty and Harper and everyone lost along the way, and lastly for everyone still alive and vanished through the anomaly. 

They’re not on Earth. The planet itself is far less alien than Sanctum was, but even without the letter he found, the bright arc of white dividing the sky above them would give it away. He rereads the letter until the paper begins to crack, until he can read it in a voice he thinks is Octavia’s, though his memories of her laugh still remain hazy. He wants to dive back into the anomaly and try planet after planet until he finds her again, finds all of his family. 

But Clarke is still too weak to stay awake and hold a conversation with him, let alone swim down to it and stay underwater long enough for them to figure it out, and Bellamy knows they can’t wait forever. 

Cadogan would have erased them both if he could, and he’ll come looking. He’s not sure what it is about old immortal men and trying to use Clarke’s body to resurrect their daughters, but you can’t reason with that sort of obsession. It’s only a matter of time before those ruthless geometric helmets break the surface of the lake’s calm waters, so Bellamy makes his decision. Clarke isn’t lucid enough for him to explain it, and he can only hope she forgives him for it, but then - they both have difficult things to forgive each other for, if they’re going to have any chance at peace together. 

He finds a rock and lets himself sink to the bottom of the lake, and he brings it down on the anomaly stone over and over and over until it begins to chip and the symbols are scratched beyond recognition, and he can only hope that it’s enough to stop the bridge from ever being opened. 

Bellamy tells Clarke the day she’s finally well enough to sit up outside in the garden, under a soft pink-gray sky. She is very quiet for a long time, and Bellamy wonders if he’ll have to remind her she’s betrayed him too, that they both have unforgivable things to answer for. He wonders if this is how the rest of their lives will go: a grudging truce formed because they can’t let go of the people they used to be together and there’s nowhere else to run away to.

Instead: a quiet, resigned grief. 

“Do you remember Lexa?” she asks him, as the sky lightens and the light slowly traces more details into the hazy foliage around them. 

He remembers an army outside the doors, and Finn’s blood on her hands, and the first of many betrayals. “Not well,” he says instead of twisting the knife.

“When we said goodbye to each other,” Clarke murmurs, frowning as she concentrates. “I think it was something along the line of… maybe someday, we wouldn’t owe anything else to our people, but we both knew that was never going to happen, not in this universe.”

“Hmm,” Bellamy says noncommittally, still not sure what she’s leading to. 

“And now here we are, the bridges literally burned behind us, our people trapped on another planet,” Clarke says, raising her face towards the light. “And there’s no one else.”

“If I thought there was a chance we could get back to them, I wouldn’t have broken it,” Bellamy says. _If I thought it was worth the risk._

“I know,” Clarke says quietly. “It’s okay. They’ll be okay without us.”

“What about us?” he asks, and finally Clarke looks at him. There are still dark bags under her eyes, but her gaze is sleep-soft and rueful. 

“We learn how to love selfishly, I guess,” she says. She reaches out, a little hesitant, and lays her hand on his knee. Bellamy waits only a heartbeat before laying his over her fingers. Bellamy looks away. Love’s a weighty word to be speaking aloud with their history, but then… they have nothing but time. They sit in silence for a while longer, looking around at the overgrown garden.

“Do you think there’s anything salvageable in that garden?” she asks eventually, quiet, uncertain of herself in a way that doesn’t seem right to him, and he wonders if she’s really asking about the garden. 

“I’ll go start weeding,” he says, but Clarke’s hand is on his knee and he makes no move to get up. 

“In a minute,” she says. “The sun’s about to come up. Stay and wait for it with me?”

“Okay,” he says with an exhale.

And together they watch the dawning sun chase away the last of the fog hanging over the mirror-still lake.

**Author's Note:**

> *finger guns* fuck canon amiright
> 
> I'm on tumblr as [kindclaws](https://kindclaws.tumblr.com/) and I will be writing spite fics long into the foreseeable future.
> 
> Seriously, check out Sam Sax's poem, it fucking slaps. Some of my favourite verses that fit eerily well with this last season and the vibe I was going for with the fic:
> 
> _after new men rise to lead us sheep  
>  toward our shearing, to make bed  
> sheets from our hair_
> 
> _after our cloud of photographs collapses  
>  & all memories retreat back  
> into their privatized skulls_
> 
> _when the blast radii have been  
>  chalked & the missiles do all they were  
> built to_
> 
> _i dare not consider it_
> 
> _instead dance with me a moment  
>  late in this last extinction_
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
